


Still Water

by trane



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Drama, Family, Gen, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-15 01:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13602969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trane/pseuds/trane
Summary: The Hargrove household is not a happy home. Billy and Max find a way to get through it together.





	Still Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maeve_of_Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeve_of_Winter/gifts).



Sometimes Billy wondered if the limits he tested with his father would ever strain against the strength of whatever he did that day to piss him off and snap, unleashing his father's anger from that broken dam in a way that couldn't be tidied and ignored with some gauze and an ice pack.  It kept him up on nights when Advil bitched out and didn't do its job to numb the throb in his head enough to sleep after one of their family meetings.  That day, those limits, the splintered dam that couldn't hold was there at last.  A busted lip and his dad's tireless fist promised a flood he couldn't swim his way out of after the rush of it finished draining and the pull dragged him under.  Today was the day he saw what there was at the bottom.  Susan would have to drain the lake to find him when she got home.

Except that a portable dam erected right there in the middle of the flood in the form of one thirteen year old moron that didn't know how to stop fighting monsters once she got a taste of it.  A vase launched across Billy's bedroom and hit his dad on the back of the head where he'd backed Billy up against a bookshelf.  It would have knocked him out if she was standing closer when she threw it, if it had made direct contact instead of deflecting off the side of his head and shattering against the floor instead.

"Get away from him!" she shouted.

There were tears in her eyes where she stood, and her puny little girl fists were balled up like she could do anything more with them than grab a couple pom poms and shake them.  May as well cheerlead her own annihilation.

What an idiot.  What a goddamn fucking idiot.

Billy could take a flood.  Maybe.  Max could get wiped out with a pond.

His dad turned his back on him, faced Max.

"What the hell—?  Did you just throw that at me?"  Neil Hargrove the Mighty, Neil Hargrove the supreme overlord of douchebaggery where Billy consciously and unconsciously rose to his birthright as prince was genuinely dumbfounded.  People didn't talk back to King Neil, and they didn't fight back.

"Yes, sir," she said, stupid to the end it seemed.  "Now get away from him."

All he'd have needed was a pond, but his shoulders went taut, the tension in his back showing the wind-up of something worse—and Billy felt the quick swell of a raging river.

_Fuck._

He didn't think.  If he thought, he'd stop.  He'd remember not to fight back, ever.  He'd remember what it meant to be Neil Hargrove's son, beginning to end; he took it, he didn't give back.  But that river rose with the first step towards Max, so Billy didn't think.

He shot forward and rammed into him from behind hard, full body tackle, would've made any coach proud, down to the floor, out of the game.  He slammed into his desk and went down on all fours in front of the door.  Billy opted not to offer him a hand up, instead shouting at Max to go.  Anger made Neil quick, and he was already back on his feet and blocking their exit.  Billy shoved Max towards his open window where the curtains billowed from the press of the cool evening wind and passersby were free to listen to the king hold court.

Max scrambled over the sill and out onto the roof.  Billy followed, didn't look back.  Looking back would have made him think.  Thinking would have reminded him who he was, and he would have stopped and let the flood take him.

"Wait!" he snapped at the edge of the roof where Max was kneeling in preparation to jump down to the lawn.

He did glance back up then.  His father wasn't in the window.  He didn't know if he was going to pop out after them or was running downstairs to get them when they got down.  He wasn't going to wait for him to get there or for the concrete on the soles of his shoes to come back.  He hung over the edge and jumped down, stumbling in his hurry and falling to the ground.  If anger made his father fast, fear was at least as good as fuel.  He jumped back up, ignoring the pain from the impact and the pain from his father's wrath, and reached both arms up, beckoning impatiently with his fingers for her to hurry her ass up.

"Come on, you little shit!"

Max scrambled over the edge of the roof and dropped into his arms.  He caught her and set her down as the sound of pounding footsteps approached from inside the house.

"Go.  Go!"

They ran for his car, and Billy didn't believe in God but he believed in luck even if he didn't have much of it.  He'd been on his way out when his dad found him in his room and summoned the prince to his throne, and maybe this time, the gallows.  His keys were in his pocket.  He yanked them out, and dropped them halfway to the car like an asshole.  He stopped, but Max was already running back and snatching them from the grass.  She ran to the passenger side, tossed them to him over the hood of the car, and they got in.

The front door slammed open.

Billy wondered what it was like to drown.

Max's eyes were huge.  "Billy!"

Neil was halfway down the driveway.

"Lock your door, idiot."

Max slammed the lock down, and he revved the engine to life.

Neil was saying something, shouting something, but Billy couldn't hear it over the rush of water, like listening to the ocean from a shell pressed to his ear, the sound filled his head like his speakers were blasting with it.  Just him and the rising water.

"Seatbelt, shit stain."

Max twisted around and fumbled with the seatbelt as he shot the car into reverse and screeched the tires as the car bumped onto the road and corrected messily before speeding off, away, leaving those deafening fucking waves behind.  Max turned in her seat and looked back as long as she could with the house within view like she thought he might run after them, rip the door off the car, and yank her out into the street while they were racing away.  Billy didn't look back.

They drove in silence without a destination firmer than 'not home'.

His heart pounded.  He pretended it wasn't there at all, that the throbbing drum came from somewhere outside himself.  Max's heart must have been going off like a hummingbird's, flickering in her chest from that display of dumbass bravado, threatening to curl up and stop.  Billy's jaw tightened.

"I knew you were crazy."

And she was.  She told him all about the Upside Down when he cornered her one day and demanded to know; there was no threat in it really, and maybe that was why she told him.  He wanted to know what she did with those kids and King Steve and why she had a startled, older look in her eyes sometimes.  He asked, because he thought that look meant Neil had started in on her when he wasn't around.  It looked a lot like the eyes of that prick in his reflection.  She told him about other monsters instead.

("Do you believe me?" she'd asked afterwards.

"Yes," he'd said, because he knew what it took to get a look like that in your eyes.  Maybe she was off her damn rocker, but there was something real in what she was afraid of.  He could believe that much.)

"But I didn't know you had a death wish," he said.

"I don't have a death wish.  He wasn't going to stop."  The copper taste of his split lip felt like agreement.  He decided to ignore them both.  They passed the arcade and kept driving, to nowhere, anywhere.  "I just don't have a death wish for you either."

She lifted a shoulder.

"Most of the time," she amended.  Then corrected herself again, "Some of the time."

Billy glanced at her.  Little asshole.

He laughed.  His lip stung at being stretched into a smile, but he laughed anyway.

They got food at a gas station after driving around, a dinner of snacks and sodas that they took with them after calling home.  Billy got his stepmom on the payphone outside, prepared to hang up if his dad had answered, and passed it to Max who let him know that her mother _suggested_ that they stay out tonight to 'give their father some peace'; code for, they'd get their asses handed to them if they showed their faces at home tonight.  Fine by him.  His dad's temper came fast and generally burned out after finding an outlet (usually him).  Maybe he would punch a wall, and everything would be tense but calm tomorrow.

They drove out and parked in an empty field beside a farm that he said smelled like cow shit even though it didn't.  They ate chips and drained their sodas on the hood of his car.  He crushed his can and threw it into the overgrown grass.

Max glanced at him a couple of times out of the corner of his eye, and he braced himself for whatever stupid thing she was mustering up the courage to say.  The second time she opened and closed her mouth, he snapped, "Spit it out."

Max frowned, but Billy's perpetual annoyance put her back on solid ground, familiar enough to get her words out, "It's just, we could be that, you know."

Crickets were singing, and the temperature was starting to drop.  Soon, with the headlights off, the night would close in, and not even the sparse stars would give them any kind of real light.

"Be what?"

She bit her lip, but her eyes hardened with defiance.  "A team.  If you weren't an asshole.  Or at least weren't such a perfectionist about it."

His lip curled up in what he wanted to be a sneer but might have been more of a smile.  Without a mirror in front of him, he'd pretend he hit his mark.  "Can't half-ass being an asshole, Max.  'You'll get your shit in gear if you want to grow out of being a goddamn loser'," he said in a pretty good impersonation of his dad.

Max didn't think it was funny.  She stared at him, a seriousness to her that made his father's words taste like rust and bile on his tongue.  "You're not him."

He looked back at her, and there was something more than exasperation lighting her eyes, something worse than fear—something like a big black void opening underneath him from the strength of her glare.

She said, "Stop trying to be."

Like a flare flickering red in the darkness, he hated her.  But that hate was just one more way Billy was doing exactly what she accused him of doing.  The flare went black.

Billy reached out and crushed her soda can against the hood of his car, curling his arm back and throwing the crumbled aluminum farther than he had his own.  He didn't hear it hit the ground.  The grass made the impact softer than he intended.

There was a blanket in the trunk.  It wasn't his first night 'giving his father some peace'.  He pulled it out and climbed into the front seat while Max stretched out in the back.  He pushed his seat back to give him as much room as possible to sleep, and after a moment, tossed the folded blanket back at her.  She jumped, having already closed her eyes, and he watched her sit up and hesitate with her hand on it from the rearview mirror.

If she said anything about it, he was snatching it back and letting her curl up and freeze.  She locked eyes with his reflection and kept her mouth shut.

He thought she'd fallen asleep when she quietly asked, "Why'd you do that?  Push him like you did."  There was a pause that he could have broken by telling her to shut up.  He waited instead.  "...You never fight back."

No, he didn't.

Some kids learned to swim.  His father taught Billy to drown.

He dropped his head back against the headrest, stretching his legs and settling in for the night.  Max didn't belong in the water.  Shithead or not.

"Because you're my sister."

He caught a flicker of a smile on her face in the mirror and closed his eyes.  The night didn't close in like it usually did out there on his own.  Calm settled over him, and the rush from the broken dam turned to quiet.  Max dropped off first, and sleep carried him right after.


End file.
